What is a Vanity URL and Why Does It Matter for Your Brand?

As an e-commerce business owner, you must know many elements to boost your brand building. One of the elements is a vanity URL.

Wondering what is a vanity URL? Let me explain.

A vanity URL is a simple and easy-to-remember URL that helps build your brand.

What are Vanity URLs?

Vanity URLs are also known as custom URLs and branded URLs. It is made to be more memorable and clear than usual traditional URLs.  If you turn a URL into a vanity URL in your e-commerce business, you can achieve top ranking of your site in SERP and hence can attract more customers.

Instead of using long and complicated URLs for your products and services, you can use easy ones such as:
www.yourcompany.com/SEOservicesUSA

As a result, vanity URLs can enhance your site’s visibility and help you acquire more clients rapidly. They also make your site look trustworthy, earning your customers’ trust and belief.

Since URL is short and precise, users can type easily and find your site easily. This makes the searching process for the customers easy, making your site user-friendly. Now let us know what the benefits of vanity URLs are.

• Improved Brand Recognition: The short terms used in the URL help customers recognize your brand and buy your products and services easily.
• Enhanced User Experience: Short and memorable vanity URLs are easy to remember and share. This can help the customers engage more with your site and enhance the market reach.
• Better Tracking: You can easily track their performance and enhancement using vanity URLs for your specific campaigns. This also lets you know how much the customers engage with your site.
• SEO benefits: Because vanity URLs are easy to find and reach, customers can easily engage with them. This indirectly enhances your site visit and ranks your site in SERPs.

According to Bitly, using a Vanity URL indirectly generates more traffic to your website.

Vanity URL Examples

Vanity URLs are mostly used for marketing, tracking, and creating professional appearances. To help you understand them better, here are some of their examples.

1. Brand-focused vanity URLs

These URLs are mostly used by companies that want to enhance their brand visibility, such as:

• Google: g.co/search

Google uses this URL to enhance its brand identity in the market. The “g.co” is used to identify the Google brand while providing the short link.

• X:  X.co/yourtweet

X uses t.co as its domain for link shortening. This URL directs users to specific tweets. The “yourtweet” part is a placeholder for the unique identifier of the tweet.

• Facebook: fb.me/yourpage

Facebook uses fb.me for its shortened URLs. This link can direct users to a specific Facebook page, where “your page” replaces the unique page identifier.

Image Source: Bitly

2. Keyword-focused vanity URL

The keyword-focused URL means that it focuses on the keyword prominently.
For example, a health-related blog, a product page for a smartphone, and an event registration page.

3. Custom vanity URLs

These are basically the URLs that mainly focus on the company and campaign.

How To Create A Vanity URL

Choose the Domain Name and Registration

DNS consideration: Choose a domain that is easy to use and understand with DNS (domain name system). Make sure that the domain you have chosen is short and clear. Now, use registrars such as Cloudflare, which offer DNS configuration tools with low latency.By doing this, you can turn a URL into a vanity URL.

TLD: TLD stands for top-level domain. When choosing a TLD, ensure that it has a feature to shorten the URL and manage DNS time.

Image Source: Rebrandly

Register the Domain

• Record and CNAME setup: After you purchase the domain, ensure to configure the DNS setup. So, if you use root domain, configure point A of your IP address for URL shortening.
• SSL/TLS certificates: Ensure the domain supports SSL/TLS by enabling HTTPS. Many URL shortening services like Bitly or Rebrandly offer automatic SSL configuration for branded domains.

URL Customization and Creation

• Customize URL path: When you use a new path for URL customization, aim for clarity and shortening of the URL. The path should be easily recognized by SEO and clear and readable.
• Redirect Configuration: Ensure that the redirect type is set correctly. For example, 301 or 302 for stable links. Confirm that the service supports URL redirection without stripping URL parameters or fragments.

Security and Maintenance

• Security Headers: When you choose the domain for the vanity  URL, ensure that the header offers security. This can protect your link from unwanted online attacks and threats, such as XSS or MIME-type sniffing.
• Regular Audits: Check your vanity URLs for broken links, expired redirects, or security vulnerabilities. Use tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Xenu’s Link Sleuth, and Ahrefs for easy auditing.

How to Set up a Vanity URL for Your Website

Vanity URLs can be a powerful tool to enhance your website’s branding and user experience. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set one up:

Image Source: Bitly

• Choose a URL shortener service

First, consider your needs and requirements when choosing a shortener service for building vanity URLs. Many services are available on the market, each with different features. Choose the one that matches your needs.
For example:
Bitly: Bitly is a popular URL shortening service that offers a free tier with many features and premium plans. Also, if you want advanced features, it offers custom domains and advanced analytics.
TinyURL: TinyURL is the best shortening service for beginners in this field. This gives you a limited customization feature with user-friendly formats.
Rebrandly: Rebrandly focuses on branded links and offers advanced customization options, making it ideal for businesses that want to maintain brand consistency.

• Create an Account

From the above-given options, choose any of them and sign up for the account. You can create an account using Google, email, or Facebook. Also, you can use the free plan or custom-based according to your needs and requirements.

• Generate a vanity URL

After signing up to your account, paste your long URL in the page and press create, generate, or shorten.
Many services allow you to generate the URL to adjust your keyword. So, if you want to generate the URL for your company or campaign, ensure to add keywords specifically.
After clicking on the Create button, your vanity URL is ready to be used on your website, social media platforms, and other websites.

Some Additional Tips:

• Keep it simple: Make your vanity URL easy to remember and type.
• Use relevant keywords: Include keywords related to your content or brand if possible.
• Track performance: Regularly monitor your vanity URL analytics to see their effectiveness.

Why Do Vanity URLs Matter for Your Brand?

Increased people’s trust and credibility 

Vanity URLs are custom, user-friendly web addresses that replace long, complex URLs. For example, instead of a generic URL like “example.com/page1234,” you can use “yourbrand.com/promo.”
According to Smrush, 45% of the companies have increased their brand visibility with the customer’s trust and credibility.

This CNA helps you build your brand easily and allows your customers to recognize it easily. Also, short URLs build trust and credibility, as they tend to be more brand-oriented.

Boosted Click-through Rates

When you make a small and precise vanity URL, it can indirectly boost your CTC. The precise URL makes the site look less complicated and spammy. This means users are more inclined to click on it, which, as a result, helps you track SEO rankings and improve your site’s ranking.

Stronger Brand Messaging

The short URL is the main reason behind strong brand messaging. The precise and well-structured URL explains your brand in a shorter form and helps your customers make decisions. For example, if you have launched a new product called SuperWidget, then create a vanity URL like “yourbrand.com/superwidget-launch.” This helps your customers recognize the product while clicking on the URL.

Easy Shareability

One of the main benefits of a vanity URL is easy shareability. It is easy to use on social media platforms such as Instagram, X, Facebook, and others.

Improved SEO Benefits

Vanity URLs can enhance your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts by including relevant keywords in the URL. Search engines like Google use these keywords to understand the content of your page, which can improve your rankings in search results.

Better Tracking and Analytics

Vanity URLs can store tracking codes like tools like Google Analytics. This helps you see the performance of your link and the details of your customers.

Related: A 5-Step Guide to Setting Up Google Analytics (GA4)

The brand gets in contact with the user

Vanity URLs can lead users directly to targeted landing pages designed to engage them with specific actions, such as signing up for a newsletter, filling out a contact form, or purchasing.

Conclusion,

Vanity URLs are the best tools for building your brand’s visibility online. They help simplify and shorten your website address, allowing your customers to trust and remember it.
In addition, when you create vanity URLs, you help to enhance the CTR, improve SEO ranking, and build customer trust and readability.

FAQs: 

• How do you make a vanity URL?

To make a vanity URL, use a simple and memorable domain name and cutomize it accordingly. Also, choose the best shortener service and ensure that your URL is precise.

• What is the purpose of a vanity URL?

The main purpose of the vanity URL is to build your e-commerce business’s brand name. It can also enhance CPR, SEO rating, and customer trust.

• Do vanity URLs affect SEO?

Yes, a vanity URL effects the SEO in a positive way. When you build the short URL, customers ensure to click the URL, and hence it enhances the rating in the SERP.

• Why are vanity URLs important?

Vanity URLs are important for brand building and overall business enhancement. They help customers recognize your brands.